Movie review: ‘Thank You for Your Service’ authentic, gritty look at war vets

Wednesday

Oct 25, 2017 at 10:50 AMOct 25, 2017 at 10:50 AM

Al Alexander More Content Now

If President Donald Trump thinks the NFL disrespects veterans, wait until he sees how they’re treated in “Thank You for Your Service,” an ambitious, albeit underwhelming, dramatization of how an understaffed VA is playing Russian roulette with an epidemic of PTSD in soldiers returning from Iraq. Based on the nonfiction book of the same name by journalist David Finkel, the movie is refreshingly free of jingoism, opting instead for a gritty authenticity that accurately addresses how our government pretty much abandons its war heroes once they put down their guns and hang up their uniforms.

They are orphans of their Uncle Sam, lost in a fog, too masculine to ask for help, and too weak to process the horrors they witnessed in a foreign land that did not welcome them. Over there, all they had was each other. For every buddy they saw lose a limb, or their life, a little piece of them dies, too; a fact impactfully driven home by Jason Hall in doing double duty as the film’s writer-director. Like his Oscar-nominated script for “American Sniper,” Hall isn’t interested in the politics of why we’re “there,” but who is “there,” mostly blue-collar grunts without skills, opportunities and job prospects outside joining the military. But like most post-9/11 vets, Iraq wasn’t the kind of war they signed up for — a morally ambiguous quagmire without purpose or goals. They fought anyway — out of love for God, country and family.

We meet three such men in Adam (Miles Teller), Solo (Beulah Koale) and Will (Joe Cole), three buds from Topeka who for the film’s purposes all wound up serving in the same patrol unit in Iraq. After a brief, opening firefight in which another member of the unit, Michael (Scott Haze), takes an enemy bullet to the head, the trio are heading home to their families. But while their bodies may be back in Kansas, their heads are back in battle, under constant shelling by feelings of guilt and remorse.

This is when “Thank You for Your Service” is at its best, pulling back the layers on how destructive PTSD can be when left to fester. Adam’s gorgeous, loving wife, Saskia (“Girl on the Train’s” Haley Bennett), knows something is amiss but can’t get Adam to open up about what’s eating him, no matter what she does. We also see an obvious distance between Adam and his two small children, whom he knows so little about he puts chocolate chips in his daughter’s pancakes forgetting she hates the morsels.

Things aren’t much better for Solo, whose pregnant wife, Alea (“Whale Rider’s” Keisha Castle-Hughes all grown up), seeks a promise from her hubby that he won’t be “back in the sand” in three months’ time trying to outrun his demons. And then there’s Will, the third of the three musketeers, who returns home to find his fiancée has ditched him without the courtesy of a Dear John letter.

It’s a compelling setup that Hall makes palpable with an underlying feeling of doom on the part of his three suicidal soldiers clawing through each day searching for a reason not to pull the trigger. Just as strong is the frustration felt by Alea and Saskia failing to get their men to open up. And when Adam and Solo finally turn to the VA for help, we see them denied the therapy they desperately need due to red tape and a massive shortage of shrinks. It’s here that your heart bleeds for these men and how the country they were willing to die for rudely turns its back on them in the moment of their greatest need.

Their heartbreak is your heartbreak, as Hall’s outstanding cast of largely unknown actors plays their roles with the utmost respect for veterans who’ve found themselves chewed up and spit out by the system. Accordingly, Teller and Koale (a real find) invest everything they have in doing right by their real-life characters with performances that are raw with emotion.

But once they and the story are established, Hall gradually finds himself being backed into a corner, not knowing where to take his story next. So he begins to repeat himself, doubling down on the bankruptcy of the system, when he should be using that time to flesh his characters out the way he did with Chris Kyle in “American Sniper.” He digs himself even deeper by resorting to melodrama by mixing Solo up in criminal activity and sending Adam off on a journey from which he may never return.

Those turns, plus a predictable last-act plot twist involving a Gold Star widow (a wasted, but very good Amy Schumer), rob the film of a lot of its power. And the lack of character development fails to elicit the tears that came so freely at the end of “American Sniper.” But then Hall is no Clint Eastwood. The result is a film you like and admire, but you can’t help walk away wishing it had been so much more.Yet, you can’t deny the movie serves its purpose by shedding light on forgotten heroes who love a country that shamefully doesn’t always love them back.